The 'God is Dead' Man Died in a State of Complete
Insanity - but Christianity Lives On!

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His
Background

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in
Rocken, Prussia. His father, who was a Lutheran pastor, died when
Friedrich was only 5, and the boy was raised by his mother in a
home that included his grandmother, two aunts, and a
sister.

He studied classical philology at the
universities of Bonn and Leipzig and was appointed professor of
classical philology at the University of Basel at the age of only
24. But he was plagued throughout his life by unreliable health
(including poor eyesight and a tendency towards frequent
headaches) and these problems contributed to him taking
retirement in 1879 (at less than 40 years old). Ten years later
he suffered a very serious mental breakdown from which he never
recovered.

Nietzsche was interested in the philosophies of
Plato and Aristotle and influenced by German philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer, but one of his strongest influences was Darwin's
Theory of Evolution which he wholeheartedly accepted. He
later also developed a friendship with the German composer
Richard Wagner, but he later broke with Wagner over the
composer's anti-Semitism and over Wagner's acceptance of noble
religiosity as displayed in the opera Parsifal. For
Nietzsche, religion could never be noble.

"...I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous
and innermost perversion..." Nietzsche.

An enthusiastic writer, he wrote several major
works, among them The Birth of Tragedy (1872; trans.
1966), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885; trans. 1954),
Beyond Good and Evil (1886; trans. 1966), On the
Genealogy of Morals (1887; trans. 1966), The
Antichrist (1888; trans. 1954), Ecce Homo (1889;
trans. 1966), and The Will to Power (1901; trans. 1910).
One of Nietszche's major philosophical concepts was that
Christianity had lost it's power in the lives of thousands of
individuals. He expressed this in his famous proclamation "God
is dead." This was never meant to be a
metaphysical/ontological statement but a statement of what he
believed to be the approaching death of a widespread
philosophical belief, that of Christianity and of the Christian
religion. He believed that Christian values had been used by
powerful but resentful forces to develop a 'slave morality,'
which he saw as a morality purposely created in order to
encourage such behavior as meekness, compliance and kindness
because such behavior served the interests of these forces. But
Nietzsche claimed that new values could be created to replace the
traditional ones, and his discussion of that possibility led to
his concept of the 'overman' or
'superman.'

His Theories

Friedrich Nietzsche challenged the foundations
of traditional morality and of Christianity. He believed in the
creativity and realities of the world in which we live, rather
than any contemplation of a world beyond. In The Twilight of
the Gods (Götzen-Dämmerung, 1888) he
wrote,

'I call Christianity the one great curse,
the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct
of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand,
too underground and too petty — I call it the one immortal
blemish of mankind. ... The only excuse for God is that he
doesn't exist.'

Nietzsche developed the concept of
"life-affirmation," which involved holding an inquiry of
all beliefs and doctrines which (he believed) drained one's life
energies, however socially-acceptable those views might be. He
has sometimes been called the first "existentialist" philosopher,
whether or not this is an accurate assessment he was certainly a
major influence on the existentialist
philosophers.

Friedrich Nietzsche in 1864.

His concept of 'overman' or 'superman' is as
the bold creator of new values, or, a creator of a "master
morality," that might properly reflect the strength and
independence of one who is able to finally become liberated from
all more traditional values, except those that he (personally and
individually) deems to be valid. Nietzsche maintained that all
human behavior is motivated by the will to power. In its positive
sense, this will to power is not simply power over others, but
the power over oneself that is necessary for creativity. Such
power is manifested in the overman's independence, creativity,
and originality. Nietzsche believed that no 'overmen' had yet
arisen, although he mentions several figures of history who might
serve as models. He suggests Socrates, Jesus, Leonardo da Vinci,
Shakespeare, Goethe, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon. Nietzsche also
professed himself to be “a follower of Dionysus, the god of
life’s exuberance”, and declared that he hoped
Dionysus would replace Jesus as the primary cultural standard for
future millennia.

This concept of the overman has often been
interpreted as one of a master-slave society and has been readily
identified with totalitarian philosophies. There is no doubt that
Adolf Hitler and Nazism, for instance, were strongly influenced
by Nietzsche's call for the rejection of traditional values and
for the leadership of one bold and daring enough to have gone
through a 'life-affirmation' of all influences culminating in the
rejection of weak influences and a final affirmation of only
positive, man-centred influences leading to a new and
all-powerful 'superman' (more on the fully-deserved association
of Nietzscheism with Nazism later in this
article).

His General Influence

Here are some concepts very prevalent today
which are at least strongly influenced by Nietzsche (not that he
ever expressed such things quite this simply!) Please notice how
some of these Nietzschean concepts later became merged and
enmeshed with Freudism and are now very prevalent in modern
psychology! Also note the inherentselfishness in
these concepts.

The goal of life should be to find
yourself. True maturity means discovering oneself - not
helping others!

The highest virtue is to be true to
oneself.

People should not hate or be embarrassed about
their bodies but need to learn how to accept and integrate their
physical selves with their minds - the mind and body make up our
entire selves.

When you fall ill, your body is trying to tell
you something; just stop and listen to the wisdom of your
own body.

Knowledge and strength are greater virtues than
humility and submission. Humility and submission should be
rejected. If people are weak and submit easily they deserve to be
strongly dominated!

Sexuality is not the opposite of virtue, but a
natural gift that needs to be developed and integrated into a
healthy, rounded life. Sexuality is a virtue in its own
right.

Many people suffer from impaired
self-esteem; they need to work on being proud of
themselves.

Overcoming feelings of guilt is an important
step to mental health. Guilt feelings must be
eradicated!

You can't love someone else if you don't love
yourself. First love yourself, then you may love
others.

Life is short; experience it as intensely as
you can otherwise it is wasted. Reject the voice of
caution!

People's values are shaped by the cultures they
live in; as society changes we need changed values. It is simply
idiotic to attempt to live by the values of another age or
society!

Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882. Seven years later he was
struck with the full force of the insanity which was never to
leave him.

The irony in all this, of course, is that
though Nietzsche claimed that his recommended path would lead to
good mental health, he spent the last ten years of his life
suffering from serious mental illness from which he never
recovered! Does this not suggest that the man himself did
not know and understand the path to good mental
health?

His Influence On
Individuals/Movements

Nietzsche's teachings led directly to the
atheistic existentialism of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969),
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Albert Camus (1913-1960). His
relativism also has had a powerful influence on two of the
most important modern French Deconstructionist philosophers,
Jacques Derrida (b. 1930) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984).
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) also had a deep admiration for
Nietzsche.

Two existentialist theologians, Paul Tillich
and Karl Barth, plus the Christian existentialist philosopher
Soren Kerkegaard also show some influence from Nietzsche,
especially Tillich. Obviously, Barth and Kierkegaard did not
absorb Nietzsche's atheism.

Many regarded Nietzsche as having helped
cause German militarism during two world wars. Nietzsche was
popular among left-wing Germans in the 1890s. Many Germans read
Thus Spoke Zarathustra and were influenced by Nietzsche's
appeal of unlimited individualism, the development of a
personality and the need to cast off the "moral influences" from
another age and society. The enormous popularity of Nietzsche led
to the subversion debate in German politics in 1894/1895.
Conservatives initially wanted to ban the work of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche influenced the Social-democratic revisionists,
anarchists, feminists and the left-wing German youth movement.
But later, mainly during the 1930s, Nietzsche also became a
darling of right wing politicians (this had taken much longer)
and Nietzscheism came to be absolutely endemic in the 'master
race' concept of the Nazis. Aspects of Nietzsche's thought were
embraced by the Nazis and the Italian Fascists, partly due to the
encouragement of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche through her
connections with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It proved
possible for the Nazi interpreters to assemble, albeit quite
selectively, certain passages from Nietzsche's writings which
could be employed to justify war, aggression and domination for
the sake of nationalistic and even racial
self-glorification.

A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF A
PHILOSOPHER INFLUENCED BY
NIETZSCHE

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was
a German philosopher and a typical example of one influenced by
Friedrich Nietzsche. He attempted to reorient Western philosophy
away from metaphysical concerns and toward ontological questions
(that is, questions concerning the meaning of 'being', or what it
means "to-be"). Originally a Roman Catholic, he had wanted to be
a Jesuit priest but instead he became an aggressive atheist. In
1917, Heidegger married Elfriede née Petri, in a
Protestant wedding. She has been blamed for being a negative
influence on him, by virtue of her strong anti-Semitic and Nazi
sympathies. Heidegger had several extramarital affairs, including
two very important ones with Jewish women who were his students,
Hannah Arendt and Elisabeth Blochmann, with whom he remained in
contact for the rest of his life (except during World War II).
Only with the recent publication of the letters between Martin
and Elfriede Heidegger in 2005 did it become known that the
Heidegger marriage was an "open" one, in that Elfriede likewise
had affairs, including one with the family doctor who had
fathered her first son, Hermann. Much controversy has surrounded
Martin Heidegger's status as a prominent academic member of the
Nazi Party. He remained a member of the Nazi party until the end
of the war. During his time as Rector at the University of
Freiburg he denied his former teacher Husserl access to the university
library because he had been born a Jew. Husserl had actually
become a Christian (Lutheran) but Heidegger was quite prepared to invoke the Nazi racial cleansing
laws. All one can say is that such an action appears typical of an apparently despicable man.
Heidegger's concept of 'angst' drew on Kierkegaard's notions of
anxiety, the importance of subjective relation to the truth,
existence in the face of death, the temporality of existence, and
the importance of passionate affirmation of one's individual
being-in-the-world. It is impossible not to be reminded of the
apostle Paul's words to Timothy,'Ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the
truth.' (2 Timothy 3:7).

The Outcome of His Theories and the Man
Himself...

Nobody can deny that Nietzsche's writings have
been used as justification for attempting to rid the world of
certain ethnic groups since they were seen as degenerate and/ or
non-Superman material. Within Nietzsche's theories,
willing reliance on an ancient religion and a refusal to consider
a man-centred 'life-affirmation' tended to denote a
degenerate people and this was 'meat and drink' to those who
would seek to eliminate certain ethnic groups from society. This
happened in Nazi Germany on a truly horrendous scale (six million
Jews before we even start considering other racial groups whose
only misfortune was that they happened to be living in Europe
during the late 30s and early 40s) and even more recently in the
Balkans. This man was also probably one of the chief influences
in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Nietzsche was widely-read
in the universities of the 50s and 60s and the sexual revolution
certainly developed from there. Neither can anybody deny that
elements of this German's philosophy have even filtered through
into some of the more worrying aspects of modern psychology,
i.e., those elements which encourage what we can only refer to as
'the new self' (please note the bulleted points under the
section entitled 'His General Influence'). 'The new self'
(in true Nietzschean style) places the individual right at the
centre of the universe and insists that the individual has
a perfect right to not only happiness and contentment, but even
total self-aggrandizement, moreover modern psychology encourages
the challenging of all previously accepted traditions and
accepted standards of behaviour.

Nietzsche has his apologists, those who claim
that he was a great writer and a great intellect who should not
be wholly associated with such things as the justification for
war, or for gross immorality or gross cruelty, but I maintain
that they are utterly wrong in offering such a defence. Nietzsche
actively set out - not only to challenge but even to overturn -
all previously accepted standards of decent and upright
behaviour - this man knew what he was doing! He hated the
concept of God (despite his Father having been a Christian
pastor), he hated the concept of morality and of decent family
values, he hated the spectre of human weakness apparently
preferring the cause of the bully and the tyrant. No! No excuses
can be made for this apparently hate-filled and despicable
gentleman who formulated a philosophy of hatred, usurpation,
opposition for its own sake, and, perhaps more than anything, for
the aggrandizement of the self above the needs of all
others. But what can be said in his defence is that he
was undoubtedly quite seriously mentally ill from a much earlier
point in his life than is generally suggested.

His Demise

In January 1889 Nietzsche suffered a final and
tragically complete mental breakdown in Turin, Italy. He had been
discovered in a street, weeping and apparently embracing a horse.
Nietzsche spent the rest of his days, first of all in an asylum,
and later in his family's care. His insanity is often said to be
due to an early syphilitic infection, but nobody can be sure
about this and it is certainly true that a large amount of
18th-19th century illness was blamed on venereal disease and such
disease could not possibly be responsible for all of it! Having
said all of that, a man who rejected all standards of sexual
morality could well have been such a victim. During his disease
(it has been claimed) Nietzsche was almost invariably quite
pleasant, and could still engage in intelligent conversation on
his better days. Yet he spent much of his final decade in utter
mental darkness and confusion and finally died in Weimar on
August 25, 1900. Sadly, there is no record of his final
repentance and of making his peace with God. After his death, his
sister Elisabeth secured the rights to his literary remains and
edited them for publication - although (it has been claimed)
sometimes in an arbitrary and distorted form. In 1885 Elisabeth
had married Bernhard Förster, a prominent leader of the
German anti-Semitic movement (which Nietzsche, in fairness, had
loathed). In later life Elisabeth was openly friendly to Hitler
and seemed to encourage the association of Nazism with her
brother's philosophy. She turned the philosopher's old house into
a sort of shrine which Hitler visited on one
occasion.

Conclusion: Nietzscheism Greatly Increased
the Suffering of the Human Race and is an Abject and Total
Failure

Though his influence has been widespread I
maintain that all the evidence points to the fact that Nietzsche
and his philosophy are an utter and abject failure in common with
the abject failure of all the 19th-20th century atheistic icons.
Why a failure? Have not many of his theories become popular? Sure
they have, but let us face this: The man died in a black despair
of complete failure - he knew - at the last - the truth about
himself even while some still foolishly continue to revere his
confused and sometimes contradictory ramblings. God is not dead
as this man proclaimed (many thousands have embraced Christianity
since the philosopher's death) but Nietzsche certainly did die.
His writings have increased - not reduced - human despair,
suffering and dissatisfaction. Millions have perished in agony in
ugly and inhuman concentration camps as a result of his rather
foolish concept of 'superman,' more millions have suffered
unbelievable moral degradation after his sexual theories took
root in the universities of the late 50s and early 60s and spread
out from there. 'The new self' concept now to be found
almost everywhere (having become quite deeply established in
modern psychology) owes more to Nietzsche than anybody else and
is combining with other influences from Nietzsche, Freud and
others to increase the dissatisfaction and frustration of life to
new levels as it becomes increasingly obvious that the
aggrandizement of self only leads to hedonism and to even
more moral failure, and even more suffering....